That’s a bold statement, isn’t it? Before you even ask the question, we give you the answer. Yes, Unreal Championship 2 looks better than Halo 2, Doom 3, and The Chronicles of Riddick. After E3 we had the chance to see every game out there and now we can tell you that Unreal Championship 2 is hands-down the best looking game on the Xbox.

How is that possible? How can they perform this magic? For the sequel, Epic Games is using a brand new edition of the Unreal Engine; the UE 2X. This highly optimized version of the UE 2.5 engine has been exclusively designed to take advantage of the Xbox hardware. This engine pushes three times the polygons of the first Unreal Championship game and incorporates an advanced shader system that makes possible visual goodness that has not yet been seen in any other Unreal game. In fact, PC gamers will have to wait for the first Unreal Engine 3 powered games to see some of the items Xbox gamers will see this February.

Click here to see more special effects

The list is extensive: emissive materials, full screen light blooming, image space effects (such as color space manipulation), radial blurs, dynamic explosions, space distortions that simulate warping effects or water refractions, depth of field techniques that create different blur effects; and the list goes on. Believe me, these are the best visuals you’ll see on this generation and we’ll have to wait for the Xbox successor to get better graphics.

These innovative visual features are not just “eye candy” as they give Unreal Championship 2 a distinctive look and now everything (from the environments to the characters and weapons) look brand new. You can tell it’s the Unreal universe, but it has never looked this good.

The art of Unreal Championship 2’s levels is so rich that it resembles an RPG or an action/adventure game more than an action-packed shooter. The frenetic action of the game doesn’t let you enjoy the levels in the same way other types of games do, but you’ll still be fascinated. This is also proof that the Unreal universe is definitely big enough to host other types of games besides shooters.

Another item worth clarifying is that this time there is no way you can confuse your teammates or team-based locations. One of the criticisms the first game had was how difficult it was to distinguish teammates (especially from long distances) and also team locations. Often players would have an enemy’s flag and end up running right back into the opposing base after losing their bearings when trying to avoid fire.

Now, unless you are color blind, everything is properly marked and fully distinguishable. Using the emissive materials, your character will be themed accordingly to your team color. If you have used the Color Chooser feature found in Windows Media Player, that gives you a general idea. Gone are the colored lights over a character’s shoulders to distinguish their team. The masked appearance will also apply to the levels, which now have panels, neons, and other architectural elements that emit light with the color associated to the respective team.

Unreal and Return to Na Pail were SUPER games. What atmosphere. It's doubtful anyone on Earth played more Unreal Tournament than me. I turned it some serious hours and was in the top 96% of all CTF players. Not bad.

UT2k3 was a steaming pile of crap. They lost the dark and moody atmosphere and clowned up the game with neon colors and the damn adrenaline (even though 1% of the UT servers ran relics!!!! The hell with what the UT community wanted!!!!).

I heard UT2k4 was fun, but I've moved from the PC to the Xbox.

This game to me just looks awful. What's up with the Melee combat? And the colors still look completely clowned up.

You couldn't find 10 people ever playing Unreal Championship and this will end up being worse. Guaranteed.

Quote from: "whiteboyskim"

Guess I'm the only one who's never been a huge Unreal fan, though UT and UT2K4 have their shining moments.

I was also ranked extremely high in CTF in UT. I thought UT2K3 sucked terribly bad and UT2K4 really brought the game closer to the original UT.

Anyway, I kind of agree in regards to the graphics of this game. Best Graphics ever, is just want teamxbox said so I quoted it. I know one thing though, the new Unreal engine easily has the best graphics I've seen.